Bianjing Roast Duck

Roast duck was a noted dish of Northern Song Bianjing (Kaifeng), the dynastic capital. Meng Yuanlao's 《东京梦华录》 (Dreams of Splendor of the Eastern Capital, completed 1147, recalling the city before 1127) records roast and stewed fowl among the foods of its taverns and night markets, including 炙鸡 and 爊鸭. After the Jin sack of Bianjing in 1127, the Song court and many of its craftsmen and cooks moved south to Lin'an (Hangzhou), where 'roast duck' (炙鸭) is recorded as a market food of the Southern Song; the 1980 journal 《中国烹饪》, citing the 《元史》, notes that after the Yuan took Lin'an the general Bayan (伯颜) moved the city's artisans to the Yuan capital Dadu (today's Beijing), by which route the craft is held to have reached the north and become the later Beijing roast duck. The Bianjing-to-Lin'an-to-Dadu lineage is the documented account of the dish's descent; the exact original method and date are not on record. The dish takes its name simply from the old name of Kaifeng, 汴京 / 汴梁.

A slice is a sheet of deep-amber skin, thin and glassy, that snaps and gives way to a thin band of melted fat and then warm, tender meat that still runs with juice. The skin should taste roasted and faintly sweet from the maltose coat, never leathery or flabby; the fat under it should have rendered down so the slice is rich but not greasy. Wrapped in a warm pancake with crisp scallion, cucumber and a smear of sweet bean sauce, the bite goes crackle, then savory-sweet, then the clean lift of the raw vegetable. Done badly the skin is pale and soft, the fat unrendered and cloying, or the meat dry and overcooked from too hot or too long an oven.

Crisp skin over juicy meat is a problem of separating and drying the skin, then roasting it hot enough to render and blister it. The dressed duck is inflated so the skin lifts from the flesh, scalded with boiling water to tighten the skin proteins and close the pores, then brushed with a maltose-water coat and air-dried for hours so the surface dehydrates — the sugar and the dry skin are what later brown and crackle. In the oven the dry skin renders its fat and the maltose drives a fast Maillard and caramel browning to the amber colour and the shatter, while the body cavity, often with a little water sealed inside, steams the meat from within so it stays juicy as the skin crisps. Too cool or too short and the skin never crackles; too hot or too long and the meat dries and the sugar scorches bitter. The pancake, scallion and sweet bean sauce are not seasoning of the duck but the structure of the bite — starch wrap, pungent fresh note, and a salty-sweet fermented sauce against the rich skin.